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Comment by JoshTko | Hacker News Reader

1. Tax companies for their portion of CO2 generation. Let costs trickle down to customers. 2. Split tax collected evenly to each citizen/perm resident via monthly check. 3. Let market figure out Co2 reduction solutions. 4. Create whistleblower process to keep carbon sequestration companies in check.

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#2 seems like a ludicrous misalignment / conflict of interest. Why would I as a taxpayer/voter want CO2 emissions to decrease if I'm essentially getting a monthly bonus for their existence?

Presumably if there is an option that is more C02 efficient, it would have less tax so could be cheaper. If you spend your monthly bonus on the cheaper option it’s still a net positive

If 1-4 is implemented, gas would become a lot more expensive. Companies will switch to EV fleets, gas demand would drop, oil companies would not lobby politicians for drilling permits as new drilling would have bad ROI. Voters will to a lesser extent do what companies are doing and purchase lower carbon impact products. The hypothetical voter you speak of would only benefit if they purchase lower carbon impact products and pocket the savings from the check. However the act of purchasing the lower carbon impact product today has far more impact than a vote for a politician carbon intensive policy in the future. The incentives are aligned in that even this weird hypothetical voter will drive the adoption of lower carbon impact products long term.

Consumption taxes do still tend to have disproportionate effects on those at the bottom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumption_tax#Savings_effect), but there's more logic to step 2 if gas prices are increased across the board than my initial post.

That does make some sense, thanks for replying and elaborating!

That industries fight hardest against this approach tells me that it's probably the most effective and efficient approach.

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